Help Wanted: YouTube Video Captioning Project

[Eugene Lubarsky]

Hi Everyone,

As you probably know, the BSWA YouTube Channel (Dhamma TV in the forum menu above) - is pretty popular and the wonderful videos there have helped many people quite a lot - see the Channel Comments. Some time ago I found out about a new YouTube feature that makes it much easier to create captions - thus making the talks a lot more accessible to those who are deaf, hearing impaired or not good at understanding spoken English. The captions can even translate the video into another language. The especially popular Buddhist Attitude to Sensuality video was used as a test, and a few days ago Bo uploaded the captions. It works quite nicely! Click the arrow button and then "CC" on the bottom-right of the video (while the video plays).



So if you'd like to help caption other videos, here's what to do:

1. Join the captioning project group - go to Groups near the top of this webpage.
2. Either check out the existing discussions to, for example, help proof read someone's transcript, or pick a new video to caption. PS: The video list in YouTube (Dhamma TV in the menu) can be sorted to see which ones are most viewed.
3. If you're starting on a new video, please create a thread named after the video - so that someone else won't start to work on it at the same time.
4. Transcribe the video yourself or use a commercial service like Castingwords. The transcript should just be text. Due to the new YT feature, it'll be automatically synced with the audio. For info see here For an example of a finished Ajahn Brahm transcript see here .
5. Store the transcript on Etherpad See a collaborative pad example here
6. Use the discussion thread to post updates by sharing the link to your file.
7. The transcript needs to be mindfully double-checked/proof read. After you post the draft perhaps someone else in the group can do this. They'd then post their updated version to the discussion.

Any ideas to make this smoother or more efficient are welcome



With Metta,
Eugene

[Bo Schafers]

This is a very worthwhile project making the Dhamma more accessible to the hearing-impaired. Thank you for starting it Eugene

I'm sure anyone joining in contributing would create loads of excellent kamma...besides carefully listening and typing out (or proof-reading) a Dhamma talk is much more fruitful than watching the latest episode of Spooks on TV...

YT captioning used to be very labour-intensive, one had to create 100's of timestamps and save it all in a special format. As Eugene said, its much easier now, all one has to do is transcribe the talk in plain text, as it is spoken The finished text you produce is then uploaded and YouTube's auto-captioning technology will do the rest, flashing the captions intelligently as the video plays back

[Rachel Green]

How wonderful that you are doing this - all blessings to you Bo and the rest of you for doing this.

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

A great project! Big Sadhu to you all.

When I have time, I would love to help translate some of the talks into the Thai language.

Much metta,

Dheerayupa

[Eugene Lubarsky]

Thanks Dheerayupa! Let us know if you have any questions.

One thing to note is that YouTube's automatic timings only works for English & Japanese at the moment, so Thai captions need to be in an .sbv file. But if the video you want to do already has English captions, we can download an English .sbv file which is formatted like:

....
0:01:28.560,0:01:35.560
Certainly that that's an important question,
because some people's ideas about the problems

0:01:38.040,0:01:43.460
of sensuality, and the joys of sensuality
have a huge impact on the way that they live
.....

Then, the text can be translated without having to do the timing lines.

[Eugene Lubarsky]

Updated instructions: Well, impermanence has struck ietherpad and some work was lost.. I'd now recommend that people use http://www.universalsubtitles.org. Note that if the video is in easy-to-understand English you don't need to go all the way and synchronise the timing - YouTube can have a go doing it automatically. And please, download your work periodically as a backup

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

Dear Eugene,

Sorry for my long silence.

I've been working on my own little project -- transcribing and translating Q&A sessions of the lay retreat at Jhana Grove. It started out as a small project to offer Ajahn Brahm's dhamma to my mother, but a few friends have got involved, and now it's gonna be an e-book to celebrate Ajahn Brahm's 40th anniversary as a monk, and it will be made available for free downloading, hopefully on this website.

However, while working on this project, I have met cyber dhamma friends who can help with Thai translation, but are not very IT knowledgeable. Is it possible for them to help with your project by just translating the transcripts that have been completed?

With much metta,

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

Dear Eugene,

A disciple of Ajahn would like to help with transcribing. Please check your PM. :-)

[Eugene Lubarsky]

Dear Dheerayupa,

Wow, that's great! Have you based your efforts on YouTube videos, and what programs/websites have you been using to do the transcribing? It will definitely be possible for your friends to help out, we just need to figure out the easiest and most efficient method

With metta,
Eugene

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

We use the most primitive method. We listen to the talk and we type the transcripts.

After the transcripts are edited, the questions will be sorted into their appropriate topics. I hope to finish the mock-ups by end of next month. But the final products are planned to be completed before Ajahn Brahm's anniversary on Dec 5.

Re: a friend helping with your transcription project, she is really good and works really fast. is it possible that she submits the transcripts and someone does the technical stuff of putting them on the video?

As for some Thai friends doing the translation, is it possible to give them your transcripts and they translate them, and someone puts the Thai translation on the video?

With much metta,

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

Dear Eugene,

The transcriber volunteer has volunteered to learn the new technology. So, could you please check the message I sent you, and send information to her email address? She is not on this forum, but is a disciple of Ajahn Brahm.

Much metta,

[Eugene Lubarsky]

Dear Dheerayupa,

If you'd like the transcripts & translation to go onto a YouTube video, as far as I know the most efficient method is to first produce an English transcript and synchronise it with the video, which YouTube is sometimes able to do automatically. This will break up the English text into individual subtitles, and each subtitle will have the time it appears and disappears within the video.

Then your friend can easily translate the synchronised subtitles into Thai, keeping the timings unchanged, and we will have synchrinsed Thai subtitles, ready for upload into YouTube. I will now send her the above information into

To get this started could you please post the internet address of the YouTube video and your English text.

With metta,
Eugene

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

Dear Eugene,

As the volunteer is not on this forum, I will forward your advice to her. If she has questions, she could write directly to you. She is better at IT than I (at least, she wants to give it a try!)

Mega metta,

[Dheerayupa Sukonthapanthu]

Dear Eugene,

Jennifer has finished transcribing Big Bang Buddhism and sent the transcript to BSWA.

Much metta,

[Alexander Busch]

Is there any activity in this project? Because after finishing my transcript and translation nothing happened. You can view it at http://community.dhammaloka.org.au/g...=71&do=discuss ("On the Other Side of Anger").
So still after 5 month nothing is online, this makes me not very motivated to spend more time into this project. Maybe the quality is too bad .... but without any feedback it's hard to improve anything.

Much metta, from a very autumnal city in Europe - Berlin

Alex